FTII row: Govt to clip Chauhan's feathers, may appoint Rajkumar Hirani as academic council's head

Pune, Sep 8: As the controversy over appointment of Gajendra Chauhan as Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) chairperson is refusing to die down, the Centre has reportedly decided to put an end to the strike of students.

Speculations are also rife that renowned filmmaker Rajkumar Hirani, an alumnus of the FTII, as the head of academic affairs of the institute.

As per reports, Chauhan will not intervene into the academic matters of the institute, which is the major bone of contention of the controversy.

Hirani will be given the power to make changes in the syllabus and make decisions over academics. While Chauhan will continue as the chairperson of the institute's governing council, responsible for infrastructure and policy matters.

As per media reports, the government had made up its mind to remove Chauhan from the chairperson's post but Centre changed its mind following intervention of Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi into the students' protest. The government feels Rahul's intervention politicised the students' protest.

With no end in sight to the nearly three-month-old strike in FTII, the protesting students on Monday threatened go on hunger strike en masse if their main demand of removal of actor Gajendra Chauhan as chairman of the premier institute was not met by the Centre.

"The students will be sitting on an indefinite hunger strike if our demands are not met by the government which has put us in this situation. There is no option left," FTII Students' Association (FSA) representative Vikas Urs told a press conference.

The FSA, however, did not set any date to start the hunger strike. Meanwhile, the fast undertaken by a faculty member Abhijit Das of the Art Direction department of the institute seeking "immediate resolution" of the crisis entered its third day today.

Referring to the fast by Das, Urs said it was "extremely disturbing" the way the FTII administration and the Information and Broadcasting Ministry were dealing with the issue.

OneIndia News